


Dirty Feet on the Mat, Dirty Hands on Me

by smolhombre



Series: Bevy [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Accidental Relationship, Also a Nuclear Bomb Sort of Happens, Body Worship, Bondage, Branding (imagined), Bruce Banner is a Weird Bird, Competence Kink, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Kink Negotiation, Non-Sexual Kink, Objectification, Oh Shit I Love You, Relationship Negotiation, Sadism, Sensory Deprivation, Sequel, Sharing Clothes, Shibari, So We're Dating Now?, Some Sexual Kink, Stone Top, Subspace, When Real Feelings Happen to Horny People
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-09 22:32:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12898227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolhombre/pseuds/smolhombre
Summary: Darcy has run out of excuses for doing this shit, much less for liking it.





	Dirty Feet on the Mat, Dirty Hands on Me

“It is  _ physics _ ,” Bruce grunts for the third time.

“I don’t  _ care _ ,” Darcy insists for the fourth.

The entirety of Bruce’s Avengers apartment is soft but barren, a den more than a home and impersonal in the way of someone used to running. His living room, where they are currently doing whatever it is that Darcy is supposed to call what they do, doesn’t have so much as a stack of old DVDs.

What it does have, courtesy in part of the screwdriver Bruce spins idly in his hand, is a suspension hook anchored to its ceiling, along with mostly neat loops of rope littering the floor.

“Luckily, I’m the one with three Ph.Ds in it, so you don’t have to.” He smiles at her over his shoulder, sharp as a knife, before stepping off the barstool on which he’d been holding a wobbling balance. Bruce was purposefully clumsy, like he was daring himself to actually get hurt. He doesn’t have to worry about real bodily harm, so he’s earned that, maybe. “You’ll get spoiled like this. I’m too nice to you.”

“I thought you had five Ph.Ds?”

Bruce sighs. “Now you know better than I do about my own education? It’s seven, thank you, and the three are just in physics. Do shut up now.”

Darcy clamps her mouth shut, watching him tie several knots in a rough length of rope. He slides it through the hook and ties a few more places before grabbing the highest bit he can reach, drawing his legs up and swinging idly. 

Darcy fights the urge to flinch where she’s sprawled on his floor like a starfish. He’d arranged her limbs and even the loose strands of her hair out in a fan before installing the hook. She’d known better than to move even without him telling her not to, and the sight of his back as he worked was it’s own reward, anyway. When she was feeling properly soft and floaty from the stillness, she thought maybe that was his intention, though in hindsight she should have probably known better.

Bruce doesn’t stretch his legs down until the rope has gone still of it’s own accord. He tugs it this way and that until he’s apparently satisfied, looking down at Darcy with his hands on his hips.

“Ready to hang?”

“Unsexy,” Darcy nods as decisively as her heavy, cottony tongue and light, hollow feeling head allow.

Bruce looks at her flatly. When he grabs the screwdriver again, Darcy thinks she’s going to lose it even before he settles heavily with a knee on either side of her ribs. Her eyes flutter shut as he presses the flat of his screwdriver down to the space between her breasts. Enough to pinch, enough to cut her eyes up at him balefully. Not enough to hurt; Darcy’s unsure if she wants it to or not, even still.

The smell of his skin and his hot, solid weight on top of her is distracting enough to forget the hook, just for a moment.

“Have I ever told you I want you to fuck me?”

Bruce brings the screwdriver to her mouth so quickly she’s hardly got the wherewithal to press her lips closed. The tip pries just past the seal they make, though it doesn’t bear down on her teeth.

“In the past five minutes? No. Good girl.” He gives the screwdriver a little twist, and after a moment she cautiously opens her mouth. He slides it in slowly, nowhere near the back of her throat, and she dares to suck on it, rewarded by his sharp inhale above her. “I’m only surprised you didn’t ruin it sooner.”

Darcy’s never loved giving oral, but this screwdriver could so easily be the hot, hard weight she feels at her navel, could so easily be his cock stretching her lips apart — at least the closest thing maybe they have to that right now, that she can’t bite down a groan.  _ Could be, could be, could be. _

Bruce yanks the screwdriver away. He flips it in his hand, tapping at her temple with the bulky handle.

“Was that you trying to use this space in here?”

“It’s gotta be good for something.”

“It’s good for storing useless questions, we’ve been over this.”

He slides back, takes the blunt end of the screwdriver and presses it into the seam in her jeans. Darcy can’t stop her hips rolling to meet it, can’t bite back the fluttery sigh.

“You say you want to fuck me, yet you’ll be satisfied with this,” Bruce sighs, having the audacity to sound dismayed. “You just want something to fill you up. That hurts my feelings, Darcy.”

“I’m only one woman,” Darcy breathes. 

He pulls the screwdriver back. The corner of its flat tip drags a sharp line on her thigh through her jeans. Earlier this morning, Bruce had watched her take a shirt from his drawer with eyes that burned her to ash before she even put it on, and he yanks it up now to scrape the soft swell below her navel. 

“What’s this?”

Darcy has to force herself back in her body to look down. Bruce runs his thumb on the exposed underwear peeking up from the waist of Darcy’s jeans. His boxer-briefs, specifically, which Darcy had felt brave taking before, but very small in them now. She knows exactly why she did it, of course; had enjoyed the anticipation of Bruce seeing them for himself, but underneath him now Darcy feels, first and foremost, that it was somehow a silly decision to make. 

Still, she can’t deny the twitch she sees under the tight stretch of his pants. 

She licks her lips. “It’s the closest I’ve been to having your cock in me, so. I take what I can get.”

Darcy stills when the screwdriver makes it to her belly button, pressing down. It’s a small thing, the pain narrow but so singular Darcy forgets she has a body except the skin Bruce is digging into, still only existing because Bruce thought to touch her there.

“Your face,” Bruce snorts. “Do all men have it so easy?”

“You’re just born lucky.”

Bruce  _ tsk _ s, sliding the screwdriver between her too warm skin and the cotton of his underwear like he could pry it off, a wayward nail stuck in a wall from a picture frame long since removed. 

“Is it nice to take other people’s things without asking?”

“Is it nice thinking about how wet these are going to be for you when you take them off?” Darcy challenges, her pulse quick and light in her throat as she itches for a reprimand.

Bruce cocks his head, studying her. 

“Open.”

Darcy complies, fidgeting as she closes around the length of the screwdriver like a horse’s bit. There’s no comfortable way to hold it between her teeth, and her entire mouth starts to feel too wet almost immediately.

“Is that what you think I want?” He flicks the end of the screwdriver, jostling the tangy metal between her teeth. “Even for you, that’s thoughtless. It’s what  _ you _ want.” He hums thoughtfully as he grabs the handle of the screwdriver and twists it. Darcy’s eyes roll back. “You’d like to warm all my clothes for me like this, don’t pretend it’s for my benefit.” 

She — would, now that she thinks about it. It seems ridiculous that she hasn’t been doing that up to now, the way Bruce says it. She would like to rifle through his drawer, pull on the few worn t-shirts still lurking in his belongings from undergrad, the button downs that wouldn’t really close around her middle or her chest, all smelling soft and clean. She could curl up in them, rub the aching line of her cunt through his boxer-briefs and in the lab, know that his collar smells like lilac, that she’d slid her hand between her body and his jeans.

He pulls the screwdriver away so suddenly a small cut blooms red at the corner of her mouth — Darcy watches Bruce lick away blood from his own lip after he just barely kisses the sting of it.  

“Who will want me now with this deformity?” She asks thickly, her tongue too wet and heavy to fit in her mouth.

“I couldn’t say,” Bruce murmurs into the skin behind Darcy’s ear. “You’d get my clothes warm for me to wear, and you’d think I was thinking of you when I wore them, wouldn’t you?”

Her stomach twists so sharply she thinks he’s going at her with the screwdriver again.

“You wouldn’t?”

Bruce doesn’t kiss her often, but now he mouths at her neck, his tongue a broad sweep in a highly visible place before he sucks a bruise to surface.

“No,” he murmurs into her skin. “No matter how wet they were —” his hand reaches down to cup her through her jeans, “or what they smelled like —”

“I paid a lot of money for this perfume, Bruce, don’t wound me further.”

The head of the screwdriver is a promise at the thumping artery in her neck. Her body is only her body where his weight is pinning her; the dig of the screwdriver and the heat of his mouth still nibbling down the column of her throat leaving her trembling and soaked and ready to let loose any remaining dignity still clung to her and beg.

Bruce pulls away, his pupils fat, black, and shining. In Darcy’s remaining functional brain cells she thinks, distantly, that she can relate.

“I wish I could touch you,” Darcy breathes. “I can’t not think about it sometimes.”

He doesn’t answer, hardly bothering to unbutton her jeans before yanking them off of her, as intentionally clumsy and rough with her body as he is with his own. 

“You didn’t bother to pick a flattering color, I see.”

Darcy, toes curling, sinks further into the slow, taffy-like place Bruce has carved for himself in her. 

“Your taste is not my problem,” she smiles dopily.

“ _ My _ taste?”

He leans forward suddenly, biting the top of her thigh until Darcy thinks she hears the flesh shred under his teeth. His fingers bruise where they hold her writhing body still. Her eyes are hot when she finally forces herself to stop thrashing, and the corners prick with embarrassment when he finally draws back, breathing heavily. 

“I let you borrow something of mine, is that any way to show gratitude?”

Darcy’s throat is tight and itchy, and she can’t make herself speak. Her thigh is a deep, burning pain still, though his fingers brush over it as if to soothe. After a moment, Bruce leans forward, a little crease in his brow. With his free hand, he lifts one of her eyelids.

“Crying? From that? Come on, Darcy. I know you aren’t so smart, but you’ve always been just a little brave. Don’t be a coward now.” 

He leans forward, licking away the moisture still beading up there.

“Come on, Darcy. Come on.”

Bruce has the ability to shave evenly, even with his trembling hands, but lacks the initiative. His stubble prickles the thin, sensitive skin around her eye as he murmurs what she realizes, eventually, is the periodic table and their elemental weights. It’s ridiculous enough to bring her back.

“I’m okay,” she manages, her voice wet and wobbly sounding. Her body is uncomfortably, terribly, unsexily hot as Darcy tries to connect the dots that lead her from what should have been a comparatively normal pain for the both of them to her nearly losing her shit. She eyes the hook, takes a deep breath of the warm soap and salt of his skin. “I’m okay,” she repeats again, and believes it a little more than before.

“You better be,” Bruce says lightly. The bridge of his nose brushes the highest swell of her cheekbone as he pulls away.

“Don’t wanna hang,” she says thickly. Her thigh is trembling still. “Can’t.”

Bruce sighs, pressing their foreheads together. It settles Darcy further back in her body, back on Bruce’s floor, where Bruce only hurts her,  _ ish _ . “This was to make me feel bad for you, so you can get what you want.” He pushes his too hot hand against her mouth before she can protest. “I keep saying I’m too nice for you, it’s really hurting my reputation. No hanging today...I suppose.”

He stays on top of her until Darcy is breathing normally. She dares to reach up, squeezing her arms around his middle and trying to drag him into an unsuccessful hug. Bruce snorts as he climbs off of her, but she thinks he lets a little exhale out, first. 

“Since you are in charge now, your highness, is rope alright with you so long as we’re on the ground?”

Darcy squirms. “Don’t call me that.”

“Don’t be silly. Isn’t that what you like?” He kneels between her spread legs, lengths of rope in his hands. “Princess, your majesty —”

She draws her knees up, and Bruce ducks to kiss one of them as the rope makes dull slapping noises on the floor, so fast Darcy isn’t entirely sure she didn’t just imagine it because she wants him to.

“You know I won’t move, though, Bruce.”

He looks at her bent legs meaningfully. She pokes her lip out, but there are little butterflies in her belly as she does it.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“I just don’t see why it’s necessary.”

He hardly slows his work as he reaches for a length of rope next to him, letting it fall over her face none too gently before busying himself at her legs again.

“Because it’s what I want.”

“Oh,” Darcy says against the heavy ropes. They are a bright drag against the cut on her lip, bend her eyelashes funny. “Fair.”

“Yes, because that’s what we care about here,” Bruce hums, eyes bright as more knots form behind his fingers. Darcy tries to relax. 

Bruce is working on some kind of harness that leaves her with the impression that she’s been stuffed into a child’s swing. It’s not...it’s not the worst thing. Bruce’s fingers brush her skin regularly as he ties then checks the knots he makes, and after a moment Darcy thinks she’d like the ropes to go higher, her body an uncontrollable variable above them that she’d like to not have to worry about.

She swallows thickly, her body a husk, a relief.

“Oh.”

Bruce pauses, biting the inside of his cheek and visibly holding back a smile. Darcy doesn’t remember when she learned how to recognize it.

“A problem, your grace?”

Darcy shifts uncomfortably, her face very hot. Her thighs have been tied together now in a series of mostly neat diamonds, nearly to her knee, like a mermaid’s tail. Her arms have too much room to move, in comparison. The freedom of it is an agony. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I would  _ never _ ,” Bruce mock-gasps. “I live to  _ serve _ .”

“That’s weird,” Darcy whines. “Why are you making this weird?”

Bruce tugs one of the ends of rope, and the drag of the rough hemp through her stolen underwear makes her arch forward.

“My deepest, most sincere, heart wrought apologies.”

“Bruce.”

“Yes, dear?”

She purses her lips.  _ Asshole _ . Bruce removes the rope still mostly strewn over her face, and she pokes her tongue out. He pinches it between his thumb and forefinger, tugging. “Arch your back,  _ sweetheart _ .”

Darcy squirms until he releases her, face and belly both hot. “Why are you acting like this,” she grumbles. “I don’t like it.”

“You made the lab assistants call you Supreme Overlord this morning, why can’t I join singing your  _ many _ praises?”

“It’s  _ different. _ ” She waits until he’s frowning at one of the knots on her leg, pulling at it with his index finger, before speaking again. “...Praises like what?”

Bruce slides a hand under the small of Darcy’s back, clawing in hard until she arches up enough for him to slide the rope underneath her. 

“Take your top off. I don’t see wh—”

The alarm overhead wails, and Darcy screams before she can help it. Her heart beats against her chest like a warhorse as she gains her bearings. “Why do we  _ ever _ try to do anything here?!”

Bruce is breathing very heavily above her, looking at the wall across from them as if he intends to develop laser eyes and melt through its beams and plaster. Oh no, no, no.

Darcy struggles to sit upright. Slowly, she reaches out to put a hand in the crook of Bruce’s elbow. He jerks away the first time, but lets her settle there the second. 

“Bruce?” The whites of his eyes are jaundiced, the arteries in his neck swelling with his rapid pulse. Darcy would be stuck underneath him if he lost his shit now, and she doesn’t have the patience for it (or a spare Hulkbuster suit shoved up her ass). She brushes the inside of his forearm, tries to link her fingers together with his. He is boneless for a moment in her grip before grabbing back so hard some of Darcy’s knuckles crack. That’s a win or a loss one, though Darcy is unsure which at the moment.

“Look, I don’t doubt the other guy is a shower not a grower, but I am perfectly content with a dick that won’t actually literally kill me, so if you could like, maybe. Not.”

Bruce looks down at her, incredulous and breathing heavy. 

“You are so stupid.”

She gulps, daring to lean forward so her forehead is pressed in the hollow of his shoulder. Darcy wants to cry in relief as his shaking subsides to normal levels. “I am rubber and you are glue —”

He grabs her jaw roughly, pressing their foreheads together for a minute. Darcy counts five deep breaths before he speaks again. “You know, I hate being interrupted.”

“Are you going to cut me loose before you leave, or am I supposed to figure out how to untie these myself?”

“Do you deserve to stay in them?” Bruce grunts, releasing her to fish his pocketknife out of his jeans. “And we both know you couldn’t figure out how to untie them yourself.”

He’s hardly cut her free before he’s on his feet, walking towards the banging now at his door.

“Shut up, Tony,” he sighs, though Tony likely doesn’t hear him. “I’m coming.”

“Good luck,” Darcy groans, flopping onto her back. 

“Ask me before you leave,” Bruce says easily, but he’s out of the door before Darcy can protest.

* * *

 

A month or so into their pseudo-not courtship (they weren’t dating, or anything. They weren’t really hooking up, either, obviously. But, like. They were doing  _ something _ ), Bruce had gone home with Darcy, sat her on the floor with her back to the couch, turned all the lights off, and left the room.

“Hey, uh. You forget something? Inhale that goo thing Jane was poking at earlier?”

Bruce sighed from her bedroom. “Failed test one. Even I am disappointed.”

Utterly befuddled, Darcy had listened to the padding of his feet as he walked back into the room, hardly breathing to stifle the noise, her heart stupidly high in her throat. It was dark outside as well, and hardly the scant pinpricks of the stars had filtered in through her lone window. Darcy had stumbled through her apartment countless times with the lights off, for three a.m. glasses of water or running to the bathroom after trying to best Erik in drinking games, but waiting on her floor like this left her feeling like an interloper, at least a poor guest in a space Bruce was letting her use.

She’d jerked back when Bruce grabbed her chin, batting at the unseen hand instinctively. Tutting, Bruce just dug his nails into her skin, red crescent moons that had lasted into the next morning. 

“Who else would it be but me, you big fool?”

He was close enough Darcy could lean forward, shaking his hand free to press her forehead to his thigh. 

“I want you to stay where I put you.”

“A little head’s up would have been cool, you know. And I don’t get these like, Nosferatu dramatics.”

His hand fisted in her hair, pulling her head back as if she could look up at his face through the dark.

“I’m shocked, truly, that you lack comprehension on any one subject. Can you do it?”

Frowning, Darcy looked around her apartment in the little give his hold allowed. “I guess?”

Bruce had tapped her forehead with a knuckle, set her back against the couch, and left again. It was dark, and quiet, and Darcy was unable to relax though he left her there for long enough part of her thought he intended her to fall asleep as she was.

She’d nearly fallen over when he brushed her hair over one shoulder, however long later. 

“You need to wear a bell,” she gasped, one hand flat to her heart. He’d given the nape of her neck a squeeze with his hand, firm and proprietary. Darcy relaxed in the brace, waiting for what she was supposed to do next.

He’d turned the lights on eventually, and he hadn’t asked her to do it again.

* * *

 

Darcy stays on his floor until her body is hers to move again. Her legs and feet are full of pins and needles as she tries to scrounge for something edible in Bruce’s kitchen (all she comes up with is a very soft clementine and a granola bar, washed down by a glass of tap water). 

Groaning and not even really full, she digs for Bruce’s tablet in his bedside drawer and after only two attempts to log onto his account — she’s human, and never made any attempts to deny being nosy — she logs onto her own and makes a grocery order for Bruce’s suite. 

Purely for her benefit, of course, since she’s up here kind of a lot now. And stuff. 

After the order is placed, Darcy kicks the ropes all in a corner, along with her jeans, and paces the open floor idly. 

“Hey FRIDAY?”

“Yes, Darcy?”

“Can I get a few news feeds up on the wall? CNN and BBC at least? He didn’t say where they were going.”

“Of course. Would you like to place a work order to have Dr. Banner’s televisions re-installed?”

Darcy rolls her eyes. “No. I don’t want to hear him complain about it when he comes back, so I’ll sacrifice picture quality just for today. Thanks, though.”

She props the tablet up on a paper towel roll on the kitchen counter as the wall opposite fills with several captioned screens. 

“BBC audio first, please.”  One of the screens swells in front of the other as the announcer becomes audible. 

“Originally reported by Jordan’s national broadcasting service as an attempted coup of the Israeli state by Hezbollah, the BBC has now confirmed the unrest today was in fact the result of a single individual who unverified sources are calling ‘Madame Masque.’ This individual is reported to have accessed several nuclear weapons with the assistance of rogue IDF soldiers, threatening to fire against a list of demands not yet made public. The World Security Council along with Saudi national forces have —”

“Alright, CNN now, please,” Darcy murmurs, heart sinking. It couldn’t have been aliens again? One of Doom’s robots gone haywire? Darcy isn’t a fool, there’s no “good” reason for any of them, least of all Bruce, to get involved in anything. But on a scale of “bad” to “terrible,” this was objectively utter shit. 

The CNN broadcast shows cellphone footage of a Palestinian checkpoint, backed up so far Darcy’s stomach twists. How could they all get out fast enough? Were they even trying to let them evacuate? There’s a fight brewing as several people clamber out of their cars, rushing forward to the soldiers up front. One of them raises their rifle. Darcy’s hands fly to her mouth.

“Oh  _ shit _ , no, no!”

Wanda is all but flung from the sky as Tony continues soaring over the checkpoint. IDF soldiers fire at him, their bullets ricocheting off the suit. Wanda skids to a graceless stop atop a wobbling disk of red light only inches from the ground, same as the one that folds up in an arc to shield the cars from falling bullets.

The soldiers keep firing, even as Tony is just a speck on the screen, before turning to Wanda. The bullets make wobbling thuds against her shield as they hit, one after the other. Not friendly fire in the least.

Darcy hears nothing but the screams of civilians trapped in their cars as Wanda tries to stretch her thin shield further. 

“FRIDAY. They — were they supposed to be there? Did anyone know they were coming?”

It is quiet. Darcy’s stomach is very cold. 

“FRIDAY.”

“Ms. Romanov contacted Colonel Rhodes when she became aware of the potential use of nuclear weapons from one of her contacts in the area. To my knowledge Mr. Stark forwarded this information to the D.O.D. on receiving it from the Colonel.”

“How soon on receiving it?” Darcy grinds out.  

“While en route to Tel Aviv.”

“I — I need pants for this conversation,” Darcy manages, storming to Bruce’s bedroom. After a cursory digging around, she pulls out the softest sweatpants in the drawer, muttering to herself all the while. If they didn't get killed by this Masque lunatic, they’d get shot at by the people whose country they just crashed. Was Tony not even bothering to pretend to comply with the Accords anymore?

She stomps back into the kitchen with her hands on her hips. “Who is there now? Have you locked us down here, yet?” 

“Mr. Stark enabled security protocol BLUE-UMBRELLA-THIRTEEN before leaving. Dr. Banner and Ms. Maximoff departed with Mr. Stark, though they’ve met Mr. Wilson and Mr. Barnes on site.”

“I almost wish I were there to see that.” Darcy cracks her knuckles. “Okay. Jane and Erik aren’t scheduled to leave that conference in Belgium until Monday, right? Can you extend their hotel reservations until Wednesday, at least? By then maybe they can avoid the worst of it.” If they manage to pull this off, anyway, and they are all still alive. Darcy taps her nails against her glass of water. “Is...is there anything we do now?”

The projected screen in front of her is still for a moment before another window opens. 

“Mr. Stark has recently added three new games to the StarkPad arcade.”

Darcy is tempted to slide down against the kitchen cabinets to wait, where she has a full view of the door on her left, the large window to her right, and the screens in front of her. But there was nothing she could do but worry. It was their job to handle stuff like this...wasn’t it? Darcy remembers the thudding of Bruce’s pulse under her hand before he left. Taking a detour to the Xanax Bruce kept mostly as a joke in his medicine cabinet, Darcy swallows two of them dry before curling up in his bed with his tablet and waiting.

* * *

 

In the lab, Darcy managed everything not directly necessitating a Ph.D. or two. The lab assistants  _ did _ often call her Supreme Overlord when they needed favors or when they begged for the coffee Darcy had hidden away so they had an excuse to go home every once in a while. 

She was good at her job. It was nothing to how Bruce worked. Whatever playacting they did, Darcy knew she was smart. Bruce, however, was  _ brilliant,  _ and watching him parse through problems she didn't understand while chewing at the end of a pen, rucking his sleeves up to his elbows and his glasses perched low on his nose, was enough to set her insides to water when the light hit him just right. It's the same expression he wore looking down at her, most of the time, like she was just another problem to solve. Maybe that should have felt less good than it did, but seeing as how Bruce could work out anything laid before him in enough time, Darcy didn’t much mind, really.

Bruce had dry erase marker smudged on his cheek when they left the lab, together for once, the day he worked out something or other about the gravitational pull of Xandar and its three stars. Darcy didn’t see why she should mention it, really, but she did check his hip with her own as they turned the corner down the hall.

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Is that what your face was earlier?”

“Bruce, I’m about to ask you something that will get your rocks off, bear with me—”

He’d pinched the squidge above the waist of her jeans, twisting until she yelped, batting his hand away uselessly.

“Ow, ow, okay! I just — come on, let go already, you’ll rip it off,” she whined, eyes watering. He was slow to release her still, the pain a low burn that soldered a blue bruise after. “I want you to teach me this stuff. Like today, what you did.”

“Yes,” Bruce said drily. “That sounds like something specifically designed for my benefit and pleasure, trying to shove astrophysics into your brain.”

But that wasn't a no, Darcy knew that by then.

They'd gone up to his apartment wordlessly, where he'd slung his tablet and a notepad at her with a list of things to Google. He loomed warm and solid over her shoulder, correcting her notes as she wrote them. 

She’d popped two buttons loose on her shirt before she left to go home.

“Thanks, Kirchhoff,” she said, voice smoky as she wiggled her eyebrows theatrically. He’d all but shoved her out of his apartment, but Darcy heard him guffawing behind the door regardless. It was the first time she’d heard his non-silent laugh, and her chest was warm as she walked to the garage and drove home.

* * *

 

Darcy wakes up very cold, unsure of where she is and shaking off a dream she can't remember. The darkness seeping into the room from the hall is still and vacant, and it takes three breaths in of Bruce’s soap and the sterile laundry detergent used in the compound before Darcy remembers.

“FRIDAY, what time is it?”

“2:27 AM.”

She frowns. It was hardly the early hours of the afternoon when they left. “They aren’t back?”

“You have several missed calls. Should I play them for you now?”

Her neck prickles as she rises from the bed, pulling the comforter with her so it drapes over her shoulders like a cape. She ties it there as if her looking foolish would immediately summon him back. “No. Tell me what happened. How long have I been asleep?”

“A little over two hours, it appears.”

“ _ Dammit _ ,” she growls, snatching the tablet from the nightstand. “Turn the lights on, come on. I need a news feed, please, if you are so unwilling to just tell me.”

FRIDAY is slow to project on the wall, and each second longer Darcy’s stomach grows more leaden. 

On every channel, the same video clip plays. The Hulk, taking a missile to the gut, then another, swatting away thick plumes of smoke. The Hulk, tearing into an IDF base. The Hulk, the headlines read in some variation or another, responsible for stopping a nuclear bomb.

The Hulk, maybe, took the hits. But Bruce was the one who could stop the missile. It wasn't just the Other Guy who had to be out there today, while Darcy was able to sleep and play solitaire on her StarkPad, waiting for the Xanax to kick in.

She watches the Hulk stumble backwards again, people screaming and winding their way around his massive feet. What did Darcy have to stress about anyway? 

Darcy marches to the kitchen for another glass of water. “Play the calls, FRIDAY.”

“ _ Darce, I saw you changed our hotel reservation — thanks, Erik, yes, that’s the — oh wait! Shit, Darcy. Sorry. Forgot we were on the phone. Thank you for handling it, but just call so I know you’re — no, the flat tip, good — I’m just worried. You don’t usually not answer. Especially since you give me shit for not answering. Like, all the time. Do you think we can sneak the big soldering iron up here, Erik? I know you must be worried, is all, Darce. Given, uh. Who’s involved. From what you haven’t told me. Anyway. Just let me know. No, wait, I have notes written on that, Erik!” _

A beep.

“ _ Lewis _ .  _ This is Maria Hill. FRIDAY’s just informed me that while the suit’s engaged some of Stark’s calls are being forwarded to you. Should you get a hold of him before I do, though I doubt that will happen, please inform him I have cleared a space on my mantle for his balls.” _

A beep.

Secretary Ross leaves a similar message. A beep. The Vice President leaves another. A beep. Nothing. 

“That’s all?” Darcy breathes. Not that she expected — but she hoped, maybe, to hear something from someone, from anyone, since…

Since what? What’s changed, really, since she first took that internship in the desert? Certainly since she and Bruce started pointedly not bumping uglies?

Darcy is pretty sure the pack of sliced cheese she finds in Bruce’s fridge is at least a little out of date, and the bread in his pantry is most certainly stale, but she manages to make a grilled cheese with them either way and is grateful that it tastes like nothing in her mouth. 

“When are they coming back, FRIDAY?”

Nothing.

“FRIDAY?”

It is not FRIDAY who answers. “You got a soft spot for your boss, Lewis? Don’t answer that. To answer  _ you _ , we’ve got, oh...another few minutes here while we wiggle out of a very boring debrief with Secretary Ross, but I need a small favor first.”

“Is everyone okay?”

“Not the favor I was thinking of.” That is a very clear non-answer. Darcy’s stomach aches, her throat tight. “I need you to go to the lab, in the corner next to the sweet ass portable french dip maker I’ve been tinkering with — Barnes, do shut up now, your culinary opinions were formed in the gulag and inherently invalid — there’s a...looks like a pointy flute? A girthy needle with some very cleverly designed ergonomic finger grippers?”

“Please stop talking, I’m already about to puke.” Darcy grabs the tablet and jogs, barefoot, out of Bruce’s apartment and into the deathly silent hall, Bruce’s comforter-cape flapping behind her. She bypasses the elevators and trips on the too-long legs of Bruce’s pants down the stairs before sliding to a stop at the lab.

Whatever the French Dip Maker is supposed to look like, Darcy isn’t sure, but she finds the machine in question with just a little digging. The metal is mismatched, the entire thing not even as long as her forearm. It’s lighter than it even looks, and Darcy studies it dubiously. 

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

“I’m gonna send you a few numbers, I want you to twist — you see at the top it looks like a, shit, what are they, you know, the thing, you put stuff in, and  —”

“The numbers, I see them, I’m not an idiot,” Darcy snaps.

“Mm, yes, okay. Put the numbers in and throw it out the window real, real fast.”

“Tony, come  _ on _ !”

“I mean it when I say very, very, very fast, because it’s still a prototype, hence why I’m having to ask you to do it at all and I don’t have it with me, so make like a big scary dog wants to fetch and —”

A new, gruff voice comes from the tablet. “Do it. I’m done listening to him talk.”

The line is dead. Darcy’s heart is in her throat as a series of coordinates light up the tablet. She has to crawl on top of Jane’s desk to unlock the window, and she nearly puts the final number in wrong in her haste to fling it from her person.

It sparks brilliantly before falling the remaining four stories down to the lawn, where it lays uselessly.

“ _ Fucking seriously _ ?!” She screeches. Darcy is scrambling off the desk to go fetch it from the grass when it sputters to life again, zooming off like a jetplane.

She collapses in the chair, pulling the comforter closer around her. Her heart is racing so fast she feels her artery protesting against the restraint of the skin of her neck. 

They’d be back soon. It’s going to be fine. If something were really wrong, she’d — she’d know. Tony would say. Surely, if something were actually wrong, he’d at least...say something.

And when they came back, maybe Darcy could feel a little better knowing she did something. She’d helped, maybe, just a little.

She looks out into the inky dark a few moments longer as if she could still see anything before closing the window.

“Say, FRIDAY, what was that?”

“That would be the ‘Pocket Rocket,’ an explosive device undetectable by GPS as well as thermo-readers, giving off no electrical current.”

Darcy’s ears ring, acid crawling hot and sour in her mouth. “Do you m— I just set off a  _ bomb _ ?” Oh god, oh god, oh god. Why hadn't she asked what it was beforehand? “Pull up those — those coordinates, what were they for? Where?”

“Ha-Masger, a gas station outside of Rabin Square.”

Oh, god. There could have been people — once the thing went off around all the petrol, who knows how far it reached? Darcy didn’t even think to ask, she just did what Stark said because she’s an  _ idiot _ .

The lab is silent, and it is deafening in its absence so her ears ring with it.

She might have just killed someone, and she didn’t even think of it. She wasn’t thinking of anyone but herself, wanting them back home, and for what —

Darcy slides out of the chair, curling up as far under the desk as she can.

“Darcy? Do I need to call a doctor?”

She should ask — surely there were cameras around, Darcy could ask to see them, if there were any people around. FRIDAY could access them.

“No,” she breathes. “No. I’m fine. I’m...I’m fine.”

* * *

 

She shreds her palms to ribbons as she waits for any of them to come back, digging her nails in hard enough to draw blood every time she’s close to nodding off. Twice she thinks she’s brave enough to ask FRIDAY for another news update, or to see Ha-Masger, though she chickens out each time, curling further into Bruce’s comforter.

This was bullshit.

Darcy isn’t heartless, any time Thor had to go play superdude it wasn’t like she didn’t worry. Even after coming to the new lab with Jane, it’s not like she wasn’t bothered whenever Bruce or Tony had to leave. But this was a different maw gaping wide in her chest, a different anxiety. 

She’d wanted to help, thinking that would ease it. But she might have actually hurt people in the process, innocent people. And for what? Why would Tony have made her do that?

Dawn pours in lavender honey through the window above her when the lab’s door opens with a quiet click.

Darcy blinks up to it blearily as Bruce stumbles in, looking the worst he’s ever looked. His hair is pressed flat to one side of his head, a riotous curl on the other. Darcy knows it hasn’t really been all that long since he left, but the purple bags under his eyes speak of weeks without rest, not several hours. His lip is split open, and the ill-fitting clothes he wears aren’t his own. 

For Bruce to look so bad, the Other Guy’s healing to not have fixed it — Darcy’s chest is a knife-like twist as she slumps against the desk. 

“H-hey.”

“You’re shitting me,” he rasps. Darcy can only let out a little whimper, her cheeks suddenly wet and hot. When did that happen? She scrubs at them and feels the dried salt on her skin. Had she just been crying under Jane’s desk the entire night? She looks back up to Bruce, suddenly wanting him to leave.

“I believe I told you to stay in the room,” he grunts, falling heavily into the chair in front of her.

“I had to set a bomb off, apparently,” she says thickly. She tries for bravado, but collapses in sniffles midway through.

Bruce goes very still. “Please don't say anything else that will upset me right now.”

“Does...that does upset you?”

“Yes,” he growls, pinching between his eyebrows. “Why can't he leave you out of it?”

Later, later, later. Darcy pushes that back to hyperanalyze later. “Are you okay, Bruce?”

He spreads his arms out, mouth pursed. “Aren’t I always?” He doesn’t look happy, despite his words. His drawn face is a study in misery. “Just had to swallow a little atom bomb. I’m sure I’ll be right as rain tomorrow.”

Slowly, Darcy crawls halfway out from the desk to press her forehead against Bruce’s shin, grabbing at his ankle with one hand. The kiss of his palm to the crown of her head is brief and light, but it looses a little of the tension in her back regardless. 

Darcy’s knees are agony before they’re numb, but she stays there until she hears Bruce’s breathing even out, until she herself succumbs to heavy but restless sleep.

* * *

 

Bruce did eat a lot, despite his barren kitchen. The serum gave him a Hulk, but also the same perpetual good cholesterol and blood pressure Steve had, so he could gorge on fast food without guilt or repercussions, with a voracity Darcy mostly envied.

The day Darcy pointed out a flaw in one of Tony’s calculations on a whiteboard in the lab, Bruce had dinner delivered to his apartment after handing her a beer. It felt like glowing praise, though as they ate they didn't really mention it. Bruce kept on long after Darcy tapped out, stuffed with more Arby's than she thought could fit in a single human body. She eyed him cautiously before laying out flat at Bruce's feet, patting her tummy idly as he continued eating on the couch above her.

As he reached for his drink, he settled his booted foot on her stomach.

“That’s as far as we go unless you have a puke thing,” Darcy warned. “Actually, even if you do.”

Bruce didn't answer, but he didn't put any more pressure down, either. His foot was uncomfortable on her very full belly, but the stillness she found underneath it was a comfort in itself until he nudged her ribs with his toe.

“Get up.”

“I will blow you if I don’t have to.”

Bruce flicked one of the salt packets from the bags at her face. She still didn't rise until he reached down, hooked two fingers in the collar of her t-shirt, and pulled until the fabric started to rip. 

“You're wearing this home, you know. How much do you want to show the cameras outside?”

Darcy hardly allowed herself to imagine it, least of all acknowledge the little hot curl in her belly. She rose slowly and followed him to the kitchen, where they unloaded his dishwasher and cleared their mess from dinner. As Darcy reached up to put away a stack of plates, Bruce pressed the flat of a fork to her cheek.

“Uh.”

“I could heat this up over the stove and brand you,” Bruce mused, seemingly content not to clarify, like his proclamation didn't settle in Darcy’s throat as if to choke her.

“Would you?” She asked finally, the fork still on her cheek.

“I don't think so,” Bruce shrugged, looking bemused; as if that in itself was the puzzle piece that wouldn't fit. Darcy, ducking to bag up the trash for the valet, thought maybe she could understand.

* * *

 

There are no assistants in the lab when she wakes, and as she blinks around, blearily trying to gain her bearings, she sees the privacy screens in place over the doors and windows.

Bruce gives a lock of her hair a little tug so she looks up at him. He looks like he didn’t benefit any from however much sleep he managed.

“I hate your job,” she rasps, throat thick and dry.

He doesn’t say anything, rising from the chair as Darcy tries to straighten herself. Every joint and taut muscle in her body screams in protest, and she doesn’t bother muffling her whimpers as she rises to her feet.

“Can I hug you?” She asks after a too long beat of silence where Bruce just studies her, still and unreadable.

“That would be bad,” he grunts. “I need a shower. Unless you have somewhere you need to be…” He waves towards the door. Darcy feels ridiculous tucking the blanket cape around her, but if it’s wishful thinking or not, she’s sure Bruce’s attention lingers there before he turns to leave.

“You know I don’t.”

“You have a busy life, princess, who am I to assume?” There’s no heat in it, no real teasing, but it’s enough for Darcy to pick up her pace as she follows. 

The groceries are waiting outside of Bruce’s door in a little cooler that Bruce ignores as he beelines for his shower. Darcy listens to the thrum of the water as she unpacks them, curling her toes in the too long hem of Bruce’s pants. She should be feeling better than she is, all things considered. Surely, she should be a little happier.

Bruce comes out in a pair of low slung sweats, toweling his hair dry. Darcy slides him the bowl of cereal she’d been making.

“You took my favorite pair. This is becoming a bad habit.”

“Do you want them back?”

“Not yet,” he manages around his mouthful of Reese’s Puffs. Darcy thinks of a hundred things she’d like to say, but swallows all of them between mouthfuls from her own bowl. When Bruce is finished he tosses the towel from his head over Darcy’s.

“Leave it,” he warns, before she can protest. Bruce leaves the bowl on the counter as he stalks to his bedroom. After a moment of hesitation, Darcy follows.

“Do you need your, uhm,” she rubs the comforter between her fingers. “I didn’t think to steal a jacket, before.”

“No.” He bites the inside of his cheek as he looks at her. “After, I — sometimes I forget, when I sleep after. You can’t stay.”

“Oh. Oh. Yes,” Darcy nods. “Sleep. I’ll g—”

“ _ No _ ,” Bruce huffs irritably. “ _ Stay _ . Just don’t crawl in bed with me.”

In a very far corner of her brain, Darcy thinks she would have slapped a not-Bruce person for snapping at her like this, after the night she had. Mostly, though, Darcy is delirious with relief. She doesn’t say thank you even though she wants to, grabbing a pillow and Bruce’s tablet to curl up at the foot of the bed.

Bruce looks at her for a very long moment before curling on his side, and Darcy busies herself in the tablet, content they are both breathing.

Darcy keeps vigil until Tony calls, four and a half hours later. His face fills the tablet’s screen, looking nearly as bad as Bruce does. Darcy watches him fiddle with a bottle of aspirin before taking them dry.

“Lewis, far be it from me to ever deny the joy in seeing your radiant beauty — though it looks like we’re doing a grunge thing, is that a thing? —  but I need to see your greener half. Ross is here.”

“It was a bomb.”

Tony sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. Darcy can hear the rasp of it against his beard. “I needed a distraction.”

“And that was the only thing you could think of?” She hisses. 

“It was the best I could think of before Ross carted Bruce off to play guinea pig, now that he had the excuse to do it,” Tony frowns, and Darcy is stupid or stupidly exhausted, because she believes him. “I checked for heat signatures before I gave you the address, I just needed a little something to go boom to get an opening. Ross won’t try anything like that back home, but I needed to get us here first.”

“So no one was there? You’re sure?”

Tony shrugs, not quite able to look at her though his camera. “I’m not a total monster, I’d like to think.”

She bites the inside of her cheek, a twinge of guilt in her belly. “And you’ll pay for all the repairs, right? Or else I’ll quit and sell my sob story to 60 Minutes.”

He looks directly into the camera at that, mouth a flat line. “Yes, Darcy. Bruce in the second floor conference room. Ten minutes.”

Bruce is already looking at her, remarkably clear eyed, as she sets the tablet down. He tosses the thin sheet off of him as he rises from the bed, joints cracking. 

“Take your top off.”

Darcy blinks. “Uh. I don’t doubt your abilities exactly, but ten minutes is a pretty short turnaround time for me —”

Rolling his eyes, Bruce kneels down in front of her, pushing away the cocoon Darcy had made out of the comforter. He rips her — his — shirt off carelessly, heedless of her squawking protest, before pulling it on himself.

Oh.

Bruce clears his throat after rising to his feet. “If you hear me going green, you should. You should go.”

She frowns, grabbing at his pants leg. “You think that’s gonna be a problem?”

“After last night, I can’t make any promises if I see Ross.”

Darcy leans forward to press a kiss to his knee. “Okay. Okay.”

“You know. I told you not to leave without asking me, yesterday,” Bruce muses, halfway out the door. “I didn’t forget that. Maybe I should chain you next time. Maybe I should have kept you tied up.”

He sounds tired, but in his wrinkled shirt, looking over his shoulder with his very brown eyes, Darcy can’t help but smile at him.

“Cameras on the second floor conference room,” she tells FRIDAY distractedly as she climbs in Bruce’s shower, shaving her legs twice and enjoying the smell of his soap on her skin as she towels dry.

Projected from the tablet onto the wall opposite the shower, Ross goes bone-white when Bruce enters in his rumpled sweats. He doesn’t speak a word as Bruce takes the seat directly to his right, and it is one of the best things Darcy has seen all day.

* * *

 

“Remember that time you. Remember when you said you would brand me?”

Bruce, a mouthful of oatmeal into breakfast over her kitchen counter, looked up over the rim of his glasses. “Mm.”

“I thought. Maybe, if it was the way you said — and not like, on my face. On a predetermined location. Maybe we could try that.”

The light on his glasses kept his expression unreadable. “Thank you for your valuable input.”

“You could not sound less excited.”

“Forgive me, I forgot I exist to make you feel good.”

Darcy had taken a spiteful spoonful of his oatmeal. Bruce had only smeared some on her upper lip like a mustache.

* * *

 

“What are you doing?”

Darcy, sat on the floor with her tongue poked out between her teeth, hardly looks up as Bruce enters his apartment. She’s got her leg tied from knee to ankle, the tablet propped up next to her playing a video going through different types of knots. It’s nice, but not the same as when Bruce did it. Too loose in some places, so sloppy it’s the wrong kind of painful in others. 

Bruce grabs a fistful of her hair, pulling her head back to look at him.

“Did you tie your ears up, too?”

The grip is solid and unyielding. Her eyes flutter shut.

“I was bored. This isn’t the worst thing I could have done, left to my own devices.”

“Forgive me, your grace, for not leaving you with a crossword while I dealt with the nuclear missiles that nearly went off yesterday.”

“Did you kill her? Masque, or whoever?”

Bruce shrugs. “Barnes handled it. Not interested in talking about it now, though.” 

He gives Darcy’s hair a tug, taking a step towards the bedroom. Her body fits in the confines of itself for the first time in what feels like eternities as she crawls on the floor after him, her hair a leash. 

He releases her as they cross the threshold. “Up.”

Darcy clambers up to the mattress, and in kneeling realizes he could leave her here like this and she’d be alright with it. Bruce wouldn’t have to touch her, even stay in the room, so long as Darcy knew he was alright at least somewhere in her orbit. It would be enough, if both of them were whole and untouching or apart. Even in the dark, even without a brand.

“Oh, shit.”

“Have we created another problem for you to complain about? Sit down properly, do I have to show you how? Let me see your leg.”

Bruce kneels at the foot of the bed, prying at the ropes. She’d pulled on one of his shirts after her shower, but nothing else. He makes no mention if he sees anything, not that Darcy expects differently. The crown of his hair is soft, she knows that, and so close she can’t help but reach out. His tremors are a familiar rhythm Darcy thinks she can recognize now, skin to skin as he has his hands on her. She thinks she might breathe to it, sometimes.

Bruce grabs her foot and pulls roughly, as if he thinks her attention is anywhere else but him.

“Darcy.” His face is taut in a frown but handsome now that Darcy has learned to look at it; the lines bracketing his mouth, the short curl of his eyelashes.

“Oh,  _ shit _ .”

“Say that again and you can kiss speaking privileges goodbye —”

“Can I kiss you? Please?”

“Why would you ask that? Even you should know better.”

“I love. I love you.”

It is quiet. 

“Oh,” Bruce echoes. “Shit.” Bruce is very still, and his expression is not unlike when he tried to explain stellar dynamics to her.

Carefully, he goes back to her leg. Darcy’s stomach shrivels. She supposes that could have gone worse, but she had hoped, maybe after everything, for a little better. Should she leave? Tell him to stop? Be grateful for what he can offer?

The first knot is pulled loose, and Bruce ducks down to kiss the skin there. One, two, three kisses to her shin. He has to work the next one free, clucking his tongue at her clumsy excuse for a knot, before he kisses the newly free skin again, once, twice, three times. 

Darcy dares to let a small ember of hope settle in her belly. Silently, Bruce unties all the knots on her leg, peppering the line of her shin with his mouth as he goes. Darcy feels very soft and quiet as the rope falls to the floor with a dull thud; no little bit like a fruit cracked open, the softest bits waiting for his attention, to be scooped out for his use.

Bruce is very careful as he strokes up Darcy’s legs, his hands too firm (and Darcy, the more quiet her brain goes, dares to think  _ too possessive, _ ) to be just teasing. His thumb brushes a scar on her right knee. As his hands swoop back down, he runs them even over the tops of her feet, one of his thumbs tracing a hard line up her insole.

His hands glide back up, tracing nonsense on her thighs before his nails scrape the outside of them. It’s almost unbearably light, considering the massive bruise, gone yellow and green with healing, blooming atop one of them from his own mouth not hours ago. 

Her body is wholly lax by the time he coaxes his shirt off of her.

Very slowly, Bruce bends to kiss the flat of her chest as his hands grab the swell of her hips, stroke up towards her ribs. When they finally make to her breasts, Darcy is properly boneless. Up, after weighing them in his very warm hands, to swoop over the ridge of her collarbone, her shoulders, down her arms. He swipes his thumbs along the back of her palm, slots their fingers together before reaching up, both hands around her throat. For a moment, he just holds her there, her pulse beating up just for the sake of meeting his hands. Bruce slides his hands up under her jaw, fingers splayed in the hollow behind her ear. Darcy giggles breathlessly as he traces the shell of it lightly enough to tickle.

Her jaw, her lip, the bridge of her nose, Bruce goes over all of it, even brushing the tips of her eyelashes. Her eyes are closed when he kisses her, unbearably brief, but enough for now. Darcy gets it. 

Bruce is shaking when he climbs off, tossing the comforter over her. He is slow to leave. Out of the window, Darcy watches him pace, then jog circles around the lawn out front with a dopey smile on her face.

* * *

 

He wears The Shirt to the lab the next day. Darcy comes up behind him with a cup of coffee and smells her perfume at his collar.

“Are you feeling warm enough, Bruce? I was telling Tony I think the heat is broken, it’s so chilly in here.”

He pinches her thigh underneath the table so hard the bruise stays for two weeks.

* * *

 

She fidgets where she’s curled on the couch, Bruce on the other end. She has clear instructions not to reach out and touch him, even curl her very cold toes under his very warm, tempting, available thigh, but she still itches for it. The harness tied around her chest is snug and comforting, the hemp soft and heavy. It’s connected via a few feet of rope to the leg of her coffee table, ostensibly as a reminder to stay in place.

If she didn’t have the leash keeping her there, just the harness and the order for stillness, she probably wouldn’t want to move. Now, though, looking at the rope barely sway with her breathing, Darcy finds she can’t help but fidget, a cat ready to bat at a laser pointer or a wayward feather.

“Do you remember,” Bruce muses, an open but untouched bottle of beer in his hand as he flips through the channels on Darcy’s TV, “when I told you to ask before you left my apartment, and you didn’t?”

“That was only two weeks ago, of course I remember.”

“Yes, of course you did,” Bruce says, so clearly humoring her that Darcy’s stomach curls, warm, into itself. “So what we are doing now is —”

“Agony.”

“Learning. The easy way, instead of the hard way.”

Darcy stills, licking at her very dry lips. “What’s the hard way?”

He takes a sip of the beer for show. “The hard way you aren’t allowed to walk. You crawl on your hands and knees here and back at the compound until you’re too sore to go anywhere.” He puts the beer down on her table, purposefully avoiding the coaster there. “Sore and tired enough I think you even ask me to carry you back upstairs, before you realize it’s just easier to stay where I put you. I would love to tell you no though, if you do want to try it that way, my lady.”

“Why do you keep on with that,” Darcy groans, but her heart’s not in it as she imagines the phantom pain in her knees, her elbows and hands, from crawling. Red creases, little bruises. Little pains, then the burning stretch her back would be. “Not the lab, not the bathroom, but. You know, you’re the smart one, if you think that’s  _ really _ the only way to learn...”

Rolling his eyes, Bruce reaches over and cups her through the jeans she stole before driving over to her apartment, their cuffs hastily rolled up, the waistband digging red into Darcy’s hips.

Darcy, very still, waits for him to move.

“I cannot believe the only thing that gets you quiet is this. Worse than a dog needing its ears scratched.”

His thumb runs along the seam even as he says it, firm pressure before he slides the zipper down. Darcy had foregone underwear, and his breath barely hitches beside her as he begins to stroke. Her body trembles with the effort of stillness under his hand; careful, deep, measured. Exactly the opposite of how Darcy would like it.  

“You’re spoiled, princess, is why I say it. Handle what you have to.”

Bruce pulls away, his breathing very even in the way of conscious effort. Darcy studies his face as she reaches down.

“What do you think of, when you do this?”

Her hands are too small, too soft, in Bruce’s place. A placeholder for them, like the ropes around her are placeholders for him. Darcy is fine with that, really, a placeholder in and of herself for Bruce, and what Bruce wants for his not-his body.

He doesn’t answer, so Darcy continues. “I think I play a role in at least some of your spank bank. I know you can at least go so far.”

“I will make you stop,” Bruce says lightly. He would, he’s done so before, and the promise of it makes her groan as she eases two fingers into herself.

“But then what visual would you be left with the next time you try to rub one out?” Her breath hitches, and she arches her back further as heat pools low in her gut.

Bruce smiles at her knowingly. His cock is heavy behind the fly of his jeans. Darcy’s mouth is wet looking at it, but no more than the line of her cunt underneath her hand.

“You doing what I say, is what. So if anything right now I’m sacrificing myself to be kind to you.”

It trips a wire in her belly, and she catches her lip between her teeth. “You’ve always been a— _ ah _ — giver, Bruce.”

He snorts, rolling to his side to take her face in both his hands. Bruce kisses her briefly, sucking her top lip in between his teeth. He barely pulls back before speaking again, the words straight to her open, waiting mouth like it was meant to catch them. “I send you to work in my clothes. Everyone watches you all day but no one is brave enough to ask. I don’t let you see what I’ve picked out for you, though, until I dress you. At first I think about blindfolding you, but I decide to make you struggle to keep your eyes shut on your own, because I know you’ll hate it.”

Darcy comes burying her face into Bruce’s shoulder. He lets her stay there until her breathing is mostly even, though he doesn’t let her zip the jeans back up. 

They watch the muted television in silence, nearly touching, until Bruce’s phone rings. He puts it to his ear wordlessly as he unties the harness, and he hangs up still having said nothing before shoving his boots on at the door.

Darcy hates Bruce’s job, and in that, at least, Darcy is sure they are evenly matched. 

“Stay here, Darcy.”

He’s gone before she has to reply, which is good, considering it saves her from a lie. Darcy darts off to the lab as soon as she sees his car turn out of her driveway.

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently this is a series now; part three to come early 2018, featuring our favorite Thunder God ;)
> 
> Thank you so very much for reading! Feedback is always appreciated :)


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